


Listening to the Past

by bjbookcase



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 04:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13069023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bjbookcase/pseuds/bjbookcase
Summary: Written for the VAMB Spring Fling 2009 per this request: {{ I prefer ‘older-but-wiser love’ rather than the author portraying age forty-plus something J/C as twenty-year olds. Oh… and just for the fun of it, I’d like the story to include these words: inoculate, fiduciary, linoleum, neutrino, pumpernickel and squeak. }}





	Listening to the Past

The voices started the moment Kathryn Janeway stepped off the platform in the transport station. Whispered fragments of conversations that floated through her mind, stringing memories together like beads on a wire. Here in the station, they spoke of years and years of comings and goings. Phoebe asking a million questions about where they were going on their annual family camping trip. Kathryn moaning and groaning about the time away from her studies. And their parents chuckling at them both. Aunt Martha arriving as regular as clockwork each Christmas and again in late summer in a flurry of hugs and kisses, and an Everest of luggage. Her father’s soft words of love and assurance that were meant to comfort, and would have if he hadn’t already seemed preoccupied and distant as he prepared to leave on yet another mission.

_“I’ll have to look at your equations when I get back, Goldenbird. Take good care of your mom and sister for me, okay?”_

_“Yes, Daddy.”_

Her own distracted words to her mother the day she left on a three week mission and didn’t return for seven years.

_“Mark is keeping Molly, but check on her, will you, Mom? She’s not acting right.”_

_“Yes, Kathryn. Shall I check on Mark, too, while I’m at it?”_

_“Oh, Mother!”_

Was that all they’d said? Hadn’t she remembered to add how much she loved her? Or kissed her goodbye? All these memories and that moment eluded her. Kathryn grunted softly and shook her head. Knowing what she was like back then, no doubt Captain Janeway was already in control, focused on the mission and thinking three steps ahead. And like her father before her, those she loved paid the price.

It was a bittersweet turn of thought, but one on which the voices fed with relish. Like hungry mice, they nibbled at other moments of uncertainty and hurt as Kathryn retrieved her groundcar and maneuvered through the busy city streets. Cheb Packer’s sweet promises and angry accusations—a confusing contrast that marked the ebb and flow of her first serious romance. The calm control that couldn’t mask the deep disappointment as her father meted out her punishment for recklessly diving in the quarries near the Mars Colony, an escapade that nearly cost her and Hobbes—as Mark was known then— their lives. Her reaction to that punishment, full of typical teen-age anger and resentment, emotions that were still simmering four years later when it came time to leave for Starfleet Academy and she came face to face with her own bitter disappointment.

_“A message, Hobbes . . . a whole summer of planning that he’d come with me my first day at the Academy and all I get is a ‘Sorry, Gol—’ She’d caught herself before blurting out her pet name. ‘—Katie, HQ needs me on Vulcan.’ And off he goes, like always.”_

_“Is your mother going with you?”_

_“No, I told her I could manage on my own.”_

Kathryn sighed. She’d pushed aside her mother’s concern so easily back then. It took a lot of years and a healthy dose of hindsight to recognize how hard her mother tried to make up for her father’s absences all those years. And in so many ways. Balancing love and affection with a firm hand. Consoling real or imagined hurts, and praising even the smallest accomplishment. The latter often to an embarrassing degree.

_“Mother, please, these people came here for ice cream. They aren’t interested me and some award I won.”_

_“Look to the future, Katie. Someday the life of one of these same people might reconnect with yours and won’t it be nice that he or she can say, ‘Kathryn Janeway? Why, I met that intelligent young lady at the Bloomington Ben and Jerry’s the day she won the Indiana Mathematics Award.'”_

* * *

Busy urban streets gave way to less-traveled country roads and Kathryn lowered the windows in the groundcar. The rich, earthy smells of Midwest farmland filled her lungs—an incense of sun-warmed soil, growing plants, and grazing animals rare on a planet where city skyfarms—with their space and energy efficient, high-yield producing towers—had replaced all but a few traditional farming enclaves as early as the 22nd century. It was a smell she couldn’t wait to shake from her heels as a child. Yet the safe, secure world that smell evoked was the one she still longed for whenever events in her life reminded her just how little she controlled them.

The voices swirled around her like leaves caught in the breeze blowing through the open windows. The quiet confidence of the medic at the dig on Pax Magdalena, insisting she rest and give the native antidote time to combat the skorant bites that had held her eight-year-old son and his father in their deadly grip for over seventy-two hours. Justin’s gentle reassurances as he held her tight, fending off the nightmares that plagued her for so long after her Cardassian captivity. Tuvok’s calm certainty that forfeiting a quick return to the Alpha Quadrant to save the Ocampa was not only the moral choice, but the logical one.

One voice stood out from the rest, a rich baritone that, more often than not, found the words to soothe the frayed edges of her emotions when nothing else could. Lord knows, he’d had plenty of practice over the years.

_“Arturis had us all fooled, Kathryn.”_

_“I should have known better, Chakotay. It was too easy, too convenient. And one damn big disappointment!”_

_He reached across the dinner table and took her hand in his. “Yes, the crew is disappointed—we all are—but that’s today. Tomorrow they will see their captain looking ahead, her focus on the future. Confident there is another way home out there, just waiting for us to find it.” He squeezed her hand, then let go and picked up his spoon. “Now, I seem to remember someone mentioning cherry cobbler.”_

A soft beep from the groundcar’s nav-guide tugged Kathryn from the past and she looked around in surprise. She’d nearly missed the lane leading to the Janeway home. Wouldn’t that have been a joke? She slowed the groundcar and turned into the lane, but instead of continuing, she pulled over and parked. Her destination was less than two miles away, but if truth be told, she wasn’t quite ready to return to her mother’s house. And it was a beautiful day for a walk.

Her mother. The only other person who could match Chakotay’s skill at handling her.

_“I’m not sure what you’re so worried about, Katie. It sounds like the two of you have given this a great deal of thought.”_

_“But, Mom, what if we take this time to get reacquainted, time without all the pressures and demands of the Delta Quadrant . . . what if we do that and it doesn’t work out?”_

_“Then by all means, get married now, go at it like bunnies until you get it out of your system, and spend the rest of your lives wondering if you’re together because you truly love one another or if you’ve simply gotten used to standing side by side. Just promise me one thing—don’t get pregnant. I’m traditionalist enough to prefer my grandchildren not grow up in a broken home.”_

Picturing the look on Chakotay’s face that day, mirth bubbled up in Kathryn’s chest and burst out in a laugh so hearty it startled the dozen or so young steers who’d gathered at the fence on the far side of the lane, curious as only cattle can be about this interruption in their grazing. They whirled and raced away, bucking and bawling, their tails held high like so many black flags. Kathryn watched their panicked flight and laughed some more.

Not before or in all the years since had she seen Chakotay so flabbergasted. But then the man had never met anyone with Gretchen Janeway’s uncanny knack for stating her opinion in the most outrageous and unsettling manner possible. Be it a holiday gathering round the Janeway dining table or rubbing elbows at some high-level Starfleet function—not even the place or the timing tempered her mother’s words. It was a trait she’d envied. When she wasn’t wishing for a handy black hole to suck her in.

Envied?

Kathryn mulled that possibility over as she gathered a small daypack from the backseat and secured the groundcar. Exaggerated and embarrassing as her mother’s statements were, not even she could deny that at their heart was always exactly what needed to be said.And who better to say it if not your mother? The truth stung a lot less if it was softened by unconditional love. And her mother had never denied her that. Had never denied either of her daughters that.

Thinking of Phoebe, Kathryn wondered what her sister would make of all these ruminations. And the voices that brought them on. She chuckled softly and made a mental note to comm her little sister later that night. Phoebe had inherited just enough of their mother’s unsettling frankness that if Kathryn brought the subject up, she could count on getting a blunt opinion.

Besides, the call would give her an excuse to see if Granny Pheebs had recovered yet from a rather impressive battle of wills with her grandson yesterday. Over a missing padd, of all things.

* * *

The lane crossed Taylor Creek on the weathered gray planks of an old-fashioned covered bridge. Kathryn leaned on the wooden side railing at mid span, sipping from the water bottle she carried out of habit and listening to the burble and babble of running water underscore the burble and babble of the voices that still accompanied her. Beneath the bridge, her image danced on the rippling waters, a reflection of colors and shapes rather than distinct features. Not that she’d see anything here she couldn’t see in any mirror. A shock of silver hair, skin browned and freckled from long hours in the sun despite religious applications of sunscreen, and a body age had softened around the edges but left functioning remarkably well considering she’d never lost her affinity for too much caffeine and too little sleep.

Kathryn smiled. If she blamed her bad habits on too many years of letting her Type-A personality call the shots, she credited her Irish-German genes for the resiliency that kept her going. That and a bit of advice delivered in true Gretchen Janeway style.

 _Naked except for a lace-trimmed bra and matching panties, she studied her reflection in the full-length mirror that stood in a corner of her mother’s bedroom._ _“Mom, have you ever considered having . . . did you ever feel the need to change . . . make yourself . . .”_

_Gretchen snorted in disgust. “Look like I’d stolen the face of a fifteen year-old and grafted it onto a eighty year-old body?” She moved behind Kathryn and placed her hands on her shoulders. Her eyes met her daughter’s in the mirror. “Does your body arouse his?”_

_Kathryn’s eyes widened and her hands flew to her hips. “Mother!”_

_“Does it?”Gretchen smiled at her patiently._

_“Yes,” she finally whispered, her hands sliding from her hips._

_“Then that’s all that matters, Katie. Age isn’t something you can be inoculated against—or should even want to be. Age is the canvas on which we paint our lives. And who would want that canvas full of holes from all the bits we cut out because they weren’t pretty enough?”_

_“Why do I think you are talking about more than a few nips and tucks, Mother?”_

_T_ _he hands on Kathryn’s shoulders turned her around to meet her mother’s wrinkled, smiling face. “Even if I was, there isn’t time now. If we don’t get you dressed and downstairs, Chakotay is going to think you’ve deserted him at the altar. Not that I wouldn’t jump at the chance to take your place if you did decide to run. I’ve seen the tent that man can make in a pair of trousers.”_

_“Mother!”_

Kathryn pushed away from the railing, stowed her water bottle in her daypack, and walked on. Just past the end of the bridge, an opening appeared in the grasses and wildflowers that grew on the shoulders of the lane. She turned off there, onto a packed-dirt pathway that ran parallel to the creek, one of the numerous and familiar trails that crisscrossed a beltway of undeveloped land on either side of the creek. Generations ago when the gullies and draws that drained into the creek proved too steep and broken for farming and had too little grass for pasture, the area had been left its natural state. Generations later that decision had been formalized during the creation of the Bloomington agricultural park; a worthy decision, but one taken for granted over the years by countless neighborhood children.

To the local children, only one thing mattered. Covered in stands of oak and poplar and dotted with berry thickets and pockets of tangled undergrowth, the rugged terrain along Taylor Creek was the perfect place for games and adventures.

If you were the sort of child who took time for those things.

_“Go away, Phoebe.” Kathryn’s eyes remained glued to her padd._

_“C’mon, Katie. It’ll be fun. Mattie has dibs on being Captain Kirk, but I bet Hobbes will let you be Spock if you ask him.”_

_“No, I want to finish this chapter on neutrino oscillations—how they change from one flavor to another—before Daddy gets home.”_

_“Change flavors? Like turning vanilla into chocolate?”_

_“Never mind, Phoebe, you wouldn’t understand anyway.”_

_“You always say that! You think I’m stupid. Well, I think you’re the boring-est ten-year-old in the world!”_

_Kathryn looked up then, but her sister was already stomping off to rejoin the rest of the neighborhood children. “No, I’m not,” she whispered. “But if I try hard enough, maybe I can be the smartest ten-year-old in the world.”_

* * *

Kathryn left the main path at a footbridge over a patch of spongy, mud-pocked ground where spring water slowly seeped into the creek. Her new route, a faint, curved depression of bare earth that led up one of the side gullies, followed the green line of lush growth that traced the passage of that unseen water as it leached down from above.

Yet finding the source of that water wasn’t what drew Kathryn up that particular path. She knew where the spring responsible for this seepage was. What drew her up this path was the majestic willow that guarded it between its gnarled roots. Her Thinking Tree.

Without hesitation, Kathryn stepped through the curtain of cascading branches into the dim, cool recesses of a living cave. The voices followed, slipping through the feathery branches like water through porous stone. Kathryn looked around. Oh, the hours she’d spent in the company of this tree—down here, propped against its sturdy trunk, or up above, curled in a chair of forked branches. Too many to count—that was certain.

And not just as a child. The peace and tranquility of this refuge had calmed the emotional storms of a teenaged Kathryn, and later soothed the hurt and loneliness of a young Academy cadet too wrapped up in her studies. Even as a fast-rising Starfleet officer, whose career, as everyone assured her, was going straight to the top, she’d sought out this place, knowing its power to re-center her. Knowing she’d leave here recharged and refocused, ready to take on whatever challenges Starfleet—or life—threw at her.

But solace and comfort weren’t the only gifts of her tree. It was after all, a thinking tree. Bolstered by its quiet, undemanding strength, she’d reached some of her most important decisions here.

Of course, those that seemed important to a child probably had little or no consequences in the great scheme of things. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t always be said of those made later in life. For good or bad, those decisions plotted the course her life would follow; they became an intrinsic part of who she was. And they always affected the lives of those closest to her.

_“For a woman who’s been waiting forever for this news, you don’t seem very excited, Mom.”_

_“Oh . . . yes, well, I’m just a bit surprised, I guess. After all, Mark has been proposing to you once a year for nearly eight years. And—”_

_“Oh, for goodness sakes, Mother! I’ve finally decided to formalize my relationship with Mark and suddenly **you’re** mincing words? I thought you loved Mark like a son!”_

_“Oh, sweetie, I do love Mark. He’s the best thing that could have happened to you after your father and Justin died.”_

_“Then what’s the problem?”_

_Gretchen reached across the corner of the kitchen table, one hand capturing Kathryn’s while the other gently stroked the back of it._ _“Katie, you know I would never purposely interfere in either of my daughters’ lives . . .”_

_The snort was out before Kathryn even realized it, earning her a glare that dried any further comment to dust on her lips. Met with silence, Gretchen’s expression softened._

_“As I was saying, I know you think you’ve thought this over from every conceivable angle, Katie—goodness knows, you’ve been down at that tree for hours—but I need you to think, really think about one more thing, sweetheart, while you’re gone on this mission to the Badlands. I want you to find some time—don’t give me that look. Put that stuffed shirt of a first officer in charge for a few hours if need be, it will do him good. However you do it, while you’re gone I want you to find some time to sit down and make a list of all the excuses—the demands of your job, the demands of his job, the timing just not being right. Make a list all those excuses that have kept you and Mark from marrying up until now. And when you’re finished, I want you to crumple up that list and start a new one.”_

_“What?”Kathryn tried to pull her hand free, but her mother held on tight._

_“A new one, Katie. Only this one is going to require that you take a good long look deep, deep inside. Then, and only then, I want you to ask yourself one question. What’s the real reason it’s taken you this long to accept Mark’s proposal?” Gretchen’s eyes held her daughter’s with a gravity that surprised Kathryn. “Will you do that for me, Katie?”_

How had she known? Hell, it had taken Kathryn another two years to figure it out. And only then because she’d found herself sitting on a distant planet, listening to an ancient legend. A legend told by a man whose very presence turned her insides to jelly. Something Mark, much as she loved him, had never managed to do.

Yet, her mother had known this. Had known marriage to Mark would have been nothing more or less than a comfortable, uncomplicated union, one of such muted passions that it would have eventually driven both of them to utter misery. One as far removed from the panoply of love and lust, caring and trust, and all the other emotions that cemented the bond she’d eventually shared with Chakotay, as Earth was from the Delta Quadrant.

And if fate . . . serendipity . . . providence—whatever you wanted to call it—hadn’t stepped in and sent _Voyager_ to the other side of the galaxy? Would her mother have pushed the matter? Kathryn smiled to herself. Of course she would have. Gretchen Janeway was craftier than a scheming Q when it came to manipulating people.

Q and her mother. In collusion. Now there was a scary thought. Kathryn rubbed the sudden goose bumps on her arms and hurried back out into the sunshine.

* * *

The Chaos Garden. Kathryn gazed up at the hillside that lay between the creek and the large yard surrounding the Janeway farmhouse, mesmerized as always by the contrasts and contradictions of this place. Crushed rock pathways and mismatched stepping stones that led everywhere, or often, no place at all. Assorted water features that dripped, pooled, cascaded, and sprayed in randomized patterns amidst the joe-pye weeds and cinnamon ferns. Cleverly placed hollows, odd-shaped mounds, and terraced berms that formed unexpected nooks and crannies where pieces of traditional, whimsical, or even some—courtesy of Aunt Martha—decidedly shocking garden art greeted visitors. And everywhere, color and greenery that grew in riotous combinations as if someone had shredded a nursery catalogue, scattered those bits to the wind, and then planted trees, shrubs, grasses, vines, and countless flowers wherever their images had fallen. It was a bedlam of beauty unlike any other. And it was Gretchen Janeway thumbing her nose at the mundane.

Kathryn walked under a trellis made of antique garden tools and covered in fragrant coral honeysuckle. Before her were three paths, all of which led to the top of the garden. And all of which crossed and re-crossed each other several times along the way, allowing one to visit any part of the garden from any starting point.

So why did choosing that starting point always seem so important? Kathryn shrugged and shook her head, unable to answer her own question. Whatever the reason, today she’d take the center path.

The voices floated on scented air and followed.

_She stood before one of the large viewscreens in Astrometrics and stared at her mother’s image, unable to think of a single thing to say. Which was ridiculous considering they had been in monthly contact for nearly a year now, thanks to the Pathfinder project._

_But not face-to-face._

_A lop-sided grin, so like her own, appeared on Gretchen’s face. “That bad, huh?”_

_“What?”_

_“The ravages of time. And here I was, thinking I didn’t look a day over fifty.”_

_“Mother, I’m almost fifty.”_

_“Cheeky child. No matter, you’re only as old as you feel and I feel great. The weather has been glorious so far this fall and I’ve been spending my days down in the Chaos Garden— pruning and shaping, pulling out spent flowers, and even adding a few new ones. Speaking of which, you should see the bottlebrush, Katie. Those tiny clumps we transplanted just before you left for the Badlands are magnificent now.”_

_“That’s wonderful, Mom, but you aren’t doing all that work by yourself, are you?”_

_“Goodness, no. Henry and his nephews are helping me. You remember them, don’t you?”_

_“I do.” Henry and his nephews started doing handyman work in the Bloomington area about the same time Zephram Cochrane took his first warp flight, but Kathryn decided not to push the matter. Besides, what was she going to do from 35,000 light years away? Beg her mother? Bribe her? Ask Starfleet Security to lock her up? She’d have better luck making sense out of chaos._

_Chaos . . . ._

_“Mom, I know this may seem like an odd question to ask after all this time, but I’ve always wondered, why a **chaos** garden?” _

_“Why would an orderly mathematical mind want to create such an antithetical garden design?” Gretchen cocked her head and smiled. “Everyone needs a little chaos in their lives, Katie. Order and routine are for the meek, inside-the-box thinkers of the world. Chaos gets the juices flowing, shakes up our arrogant assumptions about the universe. Kicks our ego in the butt because, suddenly, we don’t have all the answers. Will never have all the answers.”_

_“I don’t know, Mom, after seven years of a whole lot more than a **‘** little chaos,’ the thought of nothing but order and routine sounds pretty damn good to me.”_

_“And you’d be bored silly inside of a week. I know you better than that. You’d either be micro-managing your crew and driving them to mutiny, or you’d shut yourself away and find some what-ifs to worry at like a dog at a bone. No, you thrive on chaos, and you know it, Kathryn Janeway. You and your crew would never have made it this far if you didn’t.” On the viewscreen, Gretchen’s hand stroked her monitor, a symbolic caress that reached across the light years separating them._

Kathryn’s hand went to her cheek. Three decades later and she still felt that touch in her heart if not on her skin.

She also still felt a cringe of embarrassment at how right her mother had been. If she hadn’t admitted it then, she did after spending two endless years behind a desk at HQ once _Voyager_ returned to the Alpha Quadrant. Who’d have thought being an admiral, an achievement she’d dreamed of all her life, could be so damn boring! Her father’s career certainly hadn’t been.

_“I swear I’ve about had it, Mom. If that woman orders me to direct one more mission where all I do is sit on my duff, I’m going to go stark raving mad. Dad was never chained to a desk like this.”_

_“No, he wasn’t.” The quiet resignation in Gretchen’s voice brought Kathryn up short. She’d invited her mother to spend a few days with her in San Francisco, hoping such a visit would distract her from her growing dissatisfaction with her job. Now it seemed that what she’d really needed was a chance to vent. But not if she hurt her mother in the process. She took a deep breath and tried again._

_“Sorry, maybe Dad’s not the best example. We both know he was gone too often and for too long, and I don’t want that either. But I’m tired of sitting, Mom.” Kathryn’s fork stabbed at her shrimp salad. “Tired of second-guessing captains I only know through their Starfleet profiles. Tired of trying to read situations via subspace. Or worse yet, via a stack of data padds. Don’t get me wrong, data is important, but it can’t replace the gut feeling you get when someone won’t quite meet your eye. Or when the details of a negotiation are going just a bit too smoothly. For that, you need to be there.”_

_Kathryn laid down her fork, pulled her napkin from her lap, and tossed it on top of her uneaten salad. “Oh, hell! After seven years of nonstop duty I must be nuts, but I think I miss being a captain, Mom.”_

_“Do you really, Kathryn?” Gretchen went on before she could reply. “When’s Chakotay due back?”_

_“Not for another two weeks. Why?”_

_“Because you wouldn’t be feeling like this if he was here.” Gretchen reached over and removed the napkin from Kathryn’s salad. “If you don’t like the salad, you can order something else, but we aren’t leaving until you eat something.”_

_“Mother!”_

_“Don’t ‘mother’ me. You developed some bad eating habits in the Delta Quadrant. Habits you tend to fall back into whenever you’re fretting about something.”_

_“Uh huh. And did that over-protective, overbearing, mother hen of a former first officer also ask you to pester me about my caffeine intake and my sleeping habits during your visit?”Kathryn frowned at her mother, but took a bite of salad._

_“Well, I wasn’t going to mention it, but you could stand to cut back on the caffeine, dear. As for the other. . .” Gretchen dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “I told that handsome hunk of maleness that he was much better equipped to deal with your sleeping habits than I.”_

_“Mo—”A paroxysm of coughing cut off Kathryn’s response as a bit of lettuce went down the wrong way._

_Across the table, Gretchen dipped a chunk of crusty bread into her cioppino. “It seems he was right about one more thing._

_Her airway cleared, Kathryn took a long sip of ice water, studying her mother over the rim of her glass as the cool liquid soothed her irritated throat. “Okay, I’ll bite—and pray I don’t choke again. What else was Chakotay right about?” She cursed her curiosity the instant Gretchen smiled._

_“That keeping you off balance is the best way to bring you out of one of your funks.”_

Keeping her off balance. . . .

Kathryn smiled. Yes, the two of them had certainly managed to do that over the years. Especially Chakotay. Of course, he’d made it a part of his job description from the moment he stepped on _Voyager’s_ bridge all those years ago. And two weeks and one day after that lunch with her mother, and within minutes of them both resigning from Starfleet, he’d vowed to make it his life’s work.

Kathryn stooped over a small burbling fountain and splashed cool water on her face. The climb to the top of the garden hadn’t been particularly strenuous, not for a woman used to the physical demands and primitive conditions on remote archeological digs or the equally challenging ones on colonies rebuilding after the Dominion War. However, the day was rather warm and the wooden bench under the red maple behind her looked like a nice shady spot to cool off for a few minutes. But only a few minutes. She’d already been gone longer than she’d planned.

* * *

Still drifting on the edges of sleep, Kathryn decided she liked the gentle sway and rhythmic squeak the garden bench had suddenly acquired. And how its wooden slats suddenly felt as warm and comfortable as . . .

. . . as a familiar shoulder. Her eyes flickered open. The swing on the back porch of the farmhouse—that explained the sway and squeak. And there was no mistaking whose shoulder she was snuggled up against. Yet neither of those explained how she got there. Unless . . .

She tried to sit up, but Chakotay’s arm pulled her closer. “You can spoil the mood by lecturing me, or you can sit back and enjoy the moment. I know I am.”

In all honesty, so was she. Though if she shifted just a bit. . . .

“Mmmf!”

“What’s wrong?”

Her hand found the hard edged object prodding her backside and pulled it out where they both could see it. Chakotay took the padd from her hand. “Fiduciary? Linoleum? Pumpernickel?”

“It’s Patrick’s list of ‘wacky’ words.”

“Ah, the infamous missing padd. That was quite a meltdown young Patrick had when Phoebe said they were leaving without it.”

“A trait he inherited directly from his Granny Pheebs. My cheerful, easy-going sister pitched some royal fits when she was that age.”

“Something you, on the other hand, never dreamed of doing. Oooof!”

Kathryn hid a smile. “Oops, sorry. My elbow must have slipped.” She snuggled back against him. “And neither will our grandchildren.”

“Then it’s serious?” Their ability to think on the same wavelength had only strengthened over the years. “When you called to say you were going on to San Francisco instead of just dropping Kol and Lisa off at the transport station in Bloomington, I assumed you’d engineered some excuse to see if they were shacking up together.”

This time she sat up in spite of his protest. “Shacking up together? You and Tom Paris have been gossiping about our son’s love life again, haven’t you?”

He shrugged. “You told me to call them.”

“And invite them to dinner on Sunday, not speculate about whether Kol has finally met the mother of our grandchildren. And I didn’t engineer anything. Lisa invited me to tour the zoological center where she works and then we had lunch at some fancy new restaurant. Campesto’s.”

“Then it is serious.”

“The signs are all there. Something we both should have realized when he told us Lisa was coming to the memorial with him.”

Chakotay pulled her close again and his hand came up to stroke her hair. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yes, I am actually.”

“You sound sure of that.”

“I am.” Kathryn’s fingers fiddled with the buttons on Chakotay’s shirt. “These past few hours? Well, I guess you could say I’ve spent them listening to the past.”

She told him then about the voices that had accompanied her on her return home, and about the memories they’d resurrected. Especially those about her mother. Chakotay listened with his usual patience, interrupting only to ask a question here and there. Questions, she realized, that gently guided her to reflect not just on the voices and memories, but on the range of emotions they evoked. Anger, resentment, patience, love, embarrassment, worry, uncertainty, relief. She’d revisited all of those today.

“But I laughed, too, Chakotay. Real laughter, not the kind you force out because it’s expected of you.” She took a deep breath. “And that was my mother’s doing.”

“How so?”

“Revisiting those moments, hearing her voice again? It was as if I finally saw past my grief enough to realize that while her death has changed my connection with her, it hasn’t severed it.” Her hand left his shirt buttons and settled over his heart, feeling its gentle thrum against her fingers. “And that’s a very comforting thought. One you’ve been trying to make me understand for decades.”

“Understanding comes in its own time, love.” Chakotay’s hand came up to cover hers.

“But I seem to be slower than most at this kind of thing.” She sighed.”Well, at least I understood the message Mom left for all of us when she requested the kind of memorial service she did.”

“That was something, wasn’t it?”

“Do you think other people understood?”

“If they knew your mother then her choosing to leave this life in the same spirit she lived all 108 years of it should have come as no surprise.”

“So you don’t think the mariachi band was too much?” Beneath her hand, Chakotay’s chest shook with laughter.

“I loved the mariachi band—though I still don’t know where you found a group who also played Irish jigs and German polkas.”

“Libby Kim. Which reminds me, are she and Harry coming Sunday?”

“Yes. And before you ask, Tuvok and T’Pel and Seven and Axum are coming, too. The only no-show is the Doctor. I got the impression his new wife gave him a rather graphic choice between her and the results of rescheduling their honeymoon one more time.”

“Then it’s probably for the best. I don’t think wife number . . . how many is it now? Anyway, I don’t think Miss Perky Young Thing likes the Doctor spending so much time with a bunch of old duffers. Did you notice? He has hair again this time.”

“Miss Perky Young Thing? But, yes, I noticed.” He pulled away from her. “But just who are you calling an old duffer? Or have you forgotten who has you moaning and writhing and begging for more whenever we tangle the sheets?”

Kathryn punched his arm. “I don’t beg.” She leaned in and planted a series of soft kisses along her husband’s jaw line. “But maybe you should remind me about the rest.” That earned her the kind of kiss that still curled her toes.

When they finally came up for air, she stayed close, contentment settling around her like a warm blanket. And while she sat there, the answer to a question that had been idling in the back of her mind for several days came to her now as easily the voices had earlier.

“The Chaos Garden.”

“What about it?” Chakotay murmured into her hair.

“The perfect place to scatter Mom’s ashes. I don’t know why Phoebe and I didn’t think of it before.” The swing squeaked and swayed in protest as she pushed to her feet. “I need to call her.” She hurried toward the back door.

“I take it tangling the sheets has been put on hold.”

Her hand on the doorknob, Kathryn hung her head for a moment, and then looked back over her shoulder at Chakotay. The twinge of guilt in her gut faded the instant she saw the twinkle in his eyes.

“I won’t be long. Besides, I’m famished. How about if you use this time to fix me one of your incredibly delicious dinners. And damn the calories. From the sound of it, this old lady is going to need all the energy she can get if she’s going to keep up with you.” She opened the door and was about to step in when she thought of one last thing. “Chakotay, make a batch of Mom’s brownies, would you? Somehow this seems like the perfect night for caramel brownies.”

THE END


End file.
